Push for High Country early years hubs

A Swifts Creek action group is working on plans for two early years hubs for the High Country. The High Country Early Years Action Group is proposing two sites for integrated health and education services and full time childcare in Omeo and Swifts Creek.

The group is in discussions with the Education Department about its plans, but there is still no funding for the project.

"We need to re-imagine what early years could look like in rural and remote communities. The legislation just doesn't quite fit our context," Pauline Canfield, chair of the High Country Early Years Action Group, says.

The concept plan is still in progress but the group envisions the hubs will include full time child care, kindergarten, play groups, some health services and some school projects.

The current High Country early years services cater for children not only from Omeo but also the nearby smaller communities of Benambra, Dinner Plain, Ensay, Tongio, Bindi and Swifts Creek.

"We don't have a big population, the government is not going to get bang for their buck, but our kids still deserve the same quality of early years as anywhere else," Pauline says.

Over the last twelve months the action group has been travelling to other towns in East Gippsland and looking at other models of child care and early years services to try and learn what might work for the High Country.

"The smaller communities are actually facing the same challenges we are but the solutions for them will look different to what the solutions for us would look like. There is no one size fits all," Pauline says.

In August the group ran two public consultations for the community to become involved the process of forming a concept plan for the hubs.

"We really wanted this to be run by the community because local solutions for local issues," she says.

Communities like Swifts Creek are losing professionals because they cannot find full time child care for their children, Murray Kibble, Swifts Creek Community Centre co-ordinator, says.

The funding model for child care services currently operating in Swifts Creek is for occasional child care only and is run through Centrelink benefits.

"So if we had a parent who came up and said 'I don't want to be a part of that funding and get the child care benefit' it's bad luck because we're only actually allowed to have people who are in receipt of child care benefit," Murray says.

The challenge now for the action group is to convince the State and Federal Government of the need for the two hubs, he says.